Every Little Girl
by Ember A. Keelty
Summary: Sequel to Zero Sum. In which the Victors of the 74th Hunger Games try to get on with their lives, but are swept up in a revolution with a very different kind of figurehead.
1. Chapter 1

_(Author's note: This story is a sequel to my story Zero Sum. It probably will not make much sense if you haven't read that first.)_

I like books. I don't think I've managed to get my hands on more than a couple dozen over the course of my life, but I like them. There's something soothing about written words. They almost seem to cheat reality with the way compact little shapes unfold into larger meanings as they flow through my eyes and into my mind. It's a kind of magic, I think.

I used to hide behind the classroom bookshelf when the school turned us out for midday break. It was only a small space, but I was smaller, and I've always had a knack for not being noticed. Once the teacher was gone, I used to curl up under a table in the dark and silent emptiness and read. The books we used for teaching literacy were old and mangled and eclectic. I liked to think some of them, the ones that seemed to be missing almost as many pages as they retained, may have been from before the world went to Hell. It was in one of those that I first saw a picture of a fox.

The story was about the fox being hunted. The people after him were clearly rich, which didn't make sense to me on my first read, because a fox is a dog, and rich people don't eat dog. As I got further into the story, though, I realized that they weren't trying to eat him, that really _they _weren't even the ones hunting him. They were watching their hounds hunt him, and that _did_ make sense, because rich people like to watch things with blood, and I think the story took place before television.

I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a funny story, but it always made me a little bit sad. Hounds are almost the same thing as foxes. They're dogs. They have more in common with the animal they're killing than they do with the people who want to see them kill it.

I think about that as I lie in the too-clean-smelling white bed they put me in after lifting me from the arena. I think about Katniss, the girl I just watched walk into a fire, and how she told Rue that I was like a fox. She was wrong. Foxes don't _win_. They might live a day longer if they're successful, or a day less if they're not, but they have nothing to gain, nothing to celebrate, nothing that might be called a _victory condition_.

The people from the Capitol hover over me trying to put back together what they've broken. They primp me and preen me, and one of them gives me what she must think is a friendly smile as she pats me on the head. But she's not my friend, and I know all too well what _I _am to _her_.

_Good dog, Wren Ardell. Well done. Have a bone._

—

I don't see Rue again until the Crowning. She looks beautiful, polished to a shine and barely recognizable as the dirty, broken girl I knew from the arena. I hate them a little for that. Our dresses are the same color: grass-green with pale red trim. That sets me thinking, briefly, about how they'll make it all work - two victors, two districts, two fashion teams, two of how many other things? - but it's not my problem. All I have to worry about is holding myself together for the next few hours.

I think I might hate Caesar Flickerman more than anyone else in the Capitol. Maybe. The pre-Game interview seems like it happened in another lifetime when I was a completely different person, but now that I see him again, I can remember it clearly. I wasn't going to play along. I didn't think I _could_ play along. I said hello and as little as possible after that, and then—

_"My, not spilling _any_ of our plans, are we?"_

My plans, at the time, were this: Run. Hide. Watch. Steal food, when possible. Those are the things I'm good at — the _only_ things I'm good at. But when Caesar spoke to me, I felt clever. Once he found that angle, it became easy to say the right thing to his questions just by saying very little. It was encouraging. It was energizing. For a moment, it was almost — _almost _— fun.

When that moment was over, I had no idea what just happened. I don't think I've been quite the same since.

Another thing there are two of: thrones. Rue's and mine are too far apart for me to take her hand when Katniss first appears in the playback, at the District Twelve reaping, throwing herself at the stage like she threw herself onto the fire. After her come the shots of District Ten, then Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Four, Three, Two, One, and...

And, the music changes. It was too upbeat to begin with, but now it sounds less like a soundtrack and more like music made for dancing to. As the screen splits to show both Rue and myself climbing two separate scaffolds in two separate towns, I realize that it's a song.

_When you get up in my face you spit poison in my eyes_

_ There's poison in your praise and there's poison in your lies_

_ Baby, you're a slow death, and I knew that from the start_

_ But there must be poison on your breath the way your kiss stops my heart_

I look to Rue and see her looking right back at me, but she's not gauging my reaction like I'm trying to gauge hers. Her eyes are fixed on my dress, and her fingers pluck absently at the strings of round black spinel beads around her throat. They're gleaming and faceted and don't look much at all like the berries I suddenly realize they're supposed to represent.

What is anyone getting out of us sitting here dressed like poisonous plants while a song about kisses and poison plays? What do the Capitol audiences get out of watching little girls kill each other? The way Glimmer moved and spoke on the stage — for the men with money who could save her life — made me think of my mother when her Peacekeepers approached her. There was no question how she was being looked at. I didn't want to think that all of us might have been looked at that way.

Rue is amazing throughout the playback of the actual Game. I keep glancing at her, because she's here and now and with me and not the cold, bloody wilderness on the screen that still seems more real than anything in the Capitol. She sits straight and keeps a straight mouth and cries without making a sound. I want to scream, and most of it isn't even as bad for me as it is for her. There's just the one part I'm really afraid of, and it's at almost the very end. I have most of the three hours to get ready, to separate what's happening on the screen from my memories of it and my memories from where I am right now.

And here it comes. There I am, the bait, "hiding" badly in the bushes to lure Clove under the tree Rue's climbed. Once she's in place, Rue drops the rock she hauled up with her. It misses Clove's head, so Rue — thinking fast, or maybe just panicking — drops herself instead, the fifteen-foot fall broken only by Clove's body. They're both partially stunned by the impact, but Clove has a knife and lashes out with it. When I hear Rue scream, I rush in with my own knife.

It's strange; what I'm watching played back isn't really what I remember. I remember _fear_. Clove was terrifying: a professional killer, cruel and competent. From this angle, she doesn't look quite so much bigger than us, and at this distance, I can see clearly what we did: we set a trap to murder her. Back then, I was pleading silently the whole time for everything to go as planned, because if it didn't, I was sure I would die. Now, what I want more than anything else is to see her escape.

Of course, she doesn't. I stab her. She bleeds and screams and slashes at me. I stab her again and again and scream back at her to just die already (because I wanted it over; she was spitting blood on my face and I could _smell _things inside of her and I just wanted it _done_). Eventually, she does.

This is what my mother saw.

This is what Reed saw.

I don't know how either of them are ever going to touch me again.

I pull my knees into my chest, cover my head with my arms, and scream. I don't want to be seen anymore. I don't want to be heard, either, but I can't stop screaming, so I bite down on my own wrist — hard. The pain and the effort it takes to keep biting in spite of it pull me into myself until the world around me goes out of focus. When I close my eyes, I can almost feel as though no one were looking at me.

I don't unfold myself until the playback ends. The dents in the skin on my arm are deep and dark red-purple, and I feel a little bit calmer just looking at them.

"All right?" Caesar asks gently. I nod, and he breaks into an enormous grin. "Splendid! So, why don't you tell us all a little about your winning strategy?"

I can do this. I knew it was coming, and I've had nothing to do since I was lifted from the arena but prepare.

"It all comes down to calculating risks," I say. "The best example, of course, was what Rue and I came up with at the end. A sixty-six percent chance of survival isn't bad for this game. It was certainly better than either of our chances if we couldn't convince Katniss not to fight us, though I can't put an exact number on those."

"Very clever," says Caesar approvingly. "You are really just so clever!" I hope this is a coded way of telling me I'm saying what they want to hear, and not just his usual babbling.

"The other part," I continue, "is to always keep your eyes on the prize. I don't mean the money. That's a nice bonus, but to survive, I had to be willing to sacrifice half of it to Rue and then half of what was left to the Everdeens. In the arena, survival always comes first." They haven't yet said that two winners means half the prize for each. My hope is they'll appreciate me conceding it on my own and how that makes it look like just the way the system has to work instead of one more thing they're unfairly taking from us. I think that they'll be more likely to let me keep my promise to Katniss if I make it part of their moral: that there's only so much to go around, and cooperation will always cost us dearly.

"It's definitely a shame about that. But I'm sure you'll scrape by somehow!" He takes a moment laugh at his own joke before turning to Rue. "Well, kiddo, you said not to count you out, and look at you now! How does it feel?"

"I'm just glad it's over," says Rue, looking at me instead of him. I lean in toward her slightly, as though to say, _Go on_. Go on, you have to give them _something_. "And... I'm glad I won. Who wouldn't be?"

She smiles weakly at me, but I can't smile back. Her face falls when she realizes that was not the best question to ask. There's one answer that springs immediately to mind, and now we're all thinking it.

"Wren mentioned the prize money," says Caesar. "What's the first thing you're going to do with yours?"

"I'm going to buy a great big cake," Rue says quickly. "For my family. There are eight of us, and it will be big enough for everyone to have a piece."

"Marvelous idea!" Caesar gushes, and twists around in his chair to look at the backstage area. "Can we hook her up with the hotel caterers? Can we do that?" I don't see anyone react to him, but he nonetheless turns back to us and declares, "We can do that! I'll tell you what, Rue. We'll whip up for you the biggest, most delicious cake you have ever seen — any design you want, any flavor you want, and at a special victory celebration discount. You take that cake home with you, and you give your whole family a little taste of the luxury you've enjoyed here at the Capitol. All right?"

"Thank you so much," Rue says, and the crowd goes wild.

Caesar might have just saved us. He certainly brought it all back to what the Hunger Games are really about. Katniss is dead. Clove and Cato are dead. Thresh and Will are dead. But it's a happy, feel-good ending because the little girl who survived gets to bring home a fancy cake.


	2. Chapter 2

"I don't understand why I can't just take the elevator up to the eleventh floor. I wouldn't be leaving the building or anything."

"It simply doesn't work that way," Vince tells me as he checks his watch. Vince Petty seems to wear a different watch every day, and he always checks it when he's agitated about anything. I'm not sure whether he's keeping track of how long I've been annoying him, or counting down the minutes until he's rid of me, or just distracting himself with a shiny gem-encrusted trinket. "_I_ don't understand why you seem so set on it."

"Because she's my friend and I want to see her."

"You'll see her plenty on the victory tour in a few months, and next year you'll both have the run of the place — heaven defend us all."

Well, _he's_ clearly not going to help me. I don't know what I did to make him see me as such a burden. Win, possibly? He doesn't seem to get along very well with Joule. Maybe he's uncomfortable interacting with people from the districts who aren't cowed by the fear they'll be dead in a few days.

Which is funny, because I'm still a little afraid of that.

When Crane changed the rules, I'm sure he didn't intend for an outcome like this. I don't know quite what he intended, but it had to have something to do with Katniss and Peeta; from what Rue says, he pushed them together right after the announcement. I was worried from the start that he might revoke the change if things didn't go his way. Maybe he was going to, but by the end everything was such a mess already that he didn't want to risk dragging it out any longer and making it worse.

Technically, Rue and I didn't do anything wrong. I wasn't lying about the roulette being our best chance for survival — assuming Katniss played along, which we didn't know she would — even if that wasn't our main reason for doing it. The only person who went directly against the aim of the Game was Katniss herself — but she's dead, so they can't punish her. If they want to punish someone, we're the next in line, and I _did_ say on camera that our game wasn't the game we were supposed to be playing.

As for my excuse, it's possible that hurt my case as much as it helped it. Relatively few tributes would make their odds any _worse_ by randomizing the process. If enough people realize that, the Hunger Games as we know them could cease to exist.

I can't quite wrap my head around what that would really mean — for the Hunger Games to stop _working_ — though of course I've thought about it many times before. What if everyone agreed to draw lots? What if everyone just focused on survival and let the arena itself do all the killing, so that in the end the victor walked away with clean hands? What if everyone stepped off their platforms a second before the countdown ended?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn't matter, because _everyone_ would never do any of those things, and only the last one would be at all effective with just a few people. I've known for years that that was what I _should _do if I were ever reaped, which just goes to show what plans are worth. Not only did I fail to purposely step on a mine, but later I went out of my way to avoid stepping on one accidentally. I smiled when they all got blown up (even though my most reliable source of food got blown up with them) because once I'd missed my chance for good I could finally let myself see the irony of it all — and maybe because it was a relief to be free of that niggling little voice in my head always whispering, _if you were brave, you would do it._

But then, it turned out I wasn't really free of it. I'm still not. It just switched tenses.

"You're pacing, Ardell," Joule says from the couch he's slumped on.

Joule Ecklen is one of only two victors from District 5, and the only one to come to the Capitol these days. Floress is in her seventies and can't take more than a few steps without a walker, so they let her stay home with her husband. It would probably be an inconvenience to have to accommodate her, which I suspect does more to sway them than simple consideration for the elderly. Joule's known for his habit of drinking wine straight from the bottle. To his credit, he took a break from it for long enough to mentor Will and me. Now that the Game's over, he's right back at it — which, I'm beginning to think, may also be to his credit.

"I'm sorry," I tell him. I force myself to stop, but almost immediately find myself rocking back and forth on my heels instead.

"Nah, don't be sorry. Wassa problem?"

"I think too much."

"We can fix that!" he declares, and holds the bottle out to me.

"No, we cannot!" Vince says, swooping in to snatch it out of his hand. "It's bad enough you insist on engaging in such tacky behavior yourself, but to try to pass it on to a little girl? Shame on you!"

"Little girl?" Joule repeats. "Hell, Petty, don't tell me you think she's too young to _drink_."

"It's not a matter of what I think. It's a matter of law. Miss Ardell is fourteen. The legal drinking age is eighteen."

"Why, though? 'Cause it's bad for you? C'mon, Petty, thassa rule for Capitol kids."

"Perhaps. But tributes must abide by the same laws as 'Capitol kids.'" For some reason, he finds it necessary to put finger quotes around that last phrase.

Joule laughs. "I doubt that!" he exclaims a bit too loudly. "I really really really really _really _doubt that!"

"If it's true," I say, "I'd hate to go to school here." Joule laughs even louder, and I manage a small smile.

"What in the world are you talking about?" Vince asks, and before I quite know what's happened he's launched into some speech about "best and brightest" and "yet more prosperous future."

I exchange looks with Joule. _How?_ I mouth at him.

_I don't know_, he mouths back, and something in his expression makes the realization strike me that if I'm not killed, this is how things will be for the rest of my life. Every year from now until I'm Floress's age, I'll be right in this hotel trying to tune out the endless streams of depressing nonsense from Capitol people's mouths and shooting dark little jokes back and forth with other victors to keep from going insane.

It could be a whole lot worse. Somehow, though, I don't feel quite as lucky as I know I am.

—

I don't sleep, so the loud clattering sound from out on the balcony doesn't wake me up. I rise quickly and quietly from my bed and press myself flat against the wall beside the door. When they come in, I can try to slip past them. I noticed this evening that they took the barriers down. It makes sense, I suppose, because who would value their own life enough to go through all _that_ and then throw it away once it's over? If they haven't put them back up, I can climb onto the outside of the railing and jump down to the balcony below. It will be hard doing that four times. I might be too bruised to run at the end of it. I might slip and never _get_ to the end of it. But slipping would still be better than getting caught. I will myself still and silent, and wait.

Minutes pass, and nothing happens.

It occurs to me that this is their building. If they were coming for me, they could use the main entrance.

I peel away from the wall and turn the lights on. Still nothing happens, so I open the door and step out onto the balcony. There's a lumpy cloth bundle lying on the landing. It has a long tail of what looks to be shredded bed sheets knotted together at the ends that trails out over the edge of the railing and whips about in the wind.

Carefully, I kneel down and open the bundle. There's nothing in it but a pile of silverware. I'm stumped until I take another look and realize that the important part is actually the cloth it was wrapped up in. The white silk napkin is scribbled on with blue ink. There's a blotchy sketch of a bird perched on a fox's back, and beneath it two lines of text:

_Thank you for protecting me!_

_You are a good person so please don't hurt yourself!_

My eyes sting, and my breath catches in my throat. How long did it take Rue to figure out how to do this? Tearing up the sheets to lower it down. Adding the silverware as a weight so she could make it swing in over the railing. She's that clever, and she wanted that badly to talk to me, and she didn't even pause for a second to realize why it was a terrible idea.

I unknot the strips of cloth and release them one by one over the railing, hoping that the wind will scatter them well enough that no one will guess what they are even if they're found. The forks and spoons I hide by mixing them in with my room's own set. I don't know what to do with the message itself. Maybe I should set it to the wind, too. Maybe I should find a way to destroy it.

Instead, I fold it up and tuck it into my nightgown, where it rests just over my heart as I crawl back into bed.

—

I'm still not sleeping when the knock on my door comes in the morning. The moment I open it, Vince shoves his hand in my face, palm up. "Give it here."

They know. Of course they know. They turned the barriers off, but not the cameras. I should have just left everything exactly how it was to show I had nothing to hide. In any case, I have no choice but to cooperate now. Without a word, I dig out the napkin and hand it to Vince.

He unfolds and examines it. "What does she mean, 'Don't hurt yourself?'" he asks. I tell myself it's a good sign that he's the one they're having ask questions.

I show him the bruise on my arm. "She must have seen me do it at the Crowning."

"And what's this?" He points to the drawing.

"It's us. She's the bird, because she sings, and I'm the fox, because of my hair. It's just a picture of us being friends." He looks it over a few minutes longer, then folds it up and stuffs it into his breast pocket. "Please don't take it way from me," I say before I can stop myself.

"Take it away from you? Miss Ardell, this is hotel property that your friend has defaced and you have attempted to pilfer!" He must see how miserable I look, because after a moment his expression changes from indignant to piteous. "Now, now, don't frown like that. It isn't becoming. I know it isn't entirely your fault. This all must be very hard on you. Being a part of civilized society for the first time in your life - I'm sure it's overwhelming. But you really can't do things like this."

"I know." I just ignore the rest of it. I'm getting better at that by the day. "I didn't ask her to. It's just... she's a little girl. Can't you send a message to her, through her handler? Say that I said I was fine and I just want her to stay safe, and that I'll see her on the tour. Isn't that the right thing to say anyway? It's good for all of us if she stays out of trouble, isn't it?"

"I'll see what I can do. You just focus on staying out of trouble yourself." He pats my cheek, and I manage not to recoil. They all touch me so casually here. Caesar holding my hand at the pregame interview. Cornelius brushing my hair out of my face when I'm not even about to go on. Having grown up in the house I did, I can see the writing on the wall: the touches, the dresses, the sponsors who must believe they're investing in _something_. Maybe I won't have to worry about it for another few years. I never did get any help from sponsors, so maybe I won't have to worry about it at all.

And Rue — no, I can't think about Rue. I haven't even been around her enough to see whether it's the same for her. I won't do her any good by driving myself mad trying to piece together information I don't have.

_Anyway_, I remind myself as Vince tells me to get dressed and my things together without any indication of being about to kill me, _I won't let any of that matter today._ Today, I'm going home.


	3. Chapter 3

"If you're going to keep looking at that, you could at least share with the class."

Vince rolls his eyes at Joule from his seat across the aisle from us, but says, in a very put-upon tone, "There's just an hour left now until arrival."

"One hour until I see my mom again," I say to myself, not entirely sure how to feel about that. "One hour until I see Reed again." I'm even less sure how to feel about that. No matter what I do, I'm still my mother's daughter. _She_ could never really be repulsed by me.

"Whossat?" asks Joule. "Your boyfriend?"

"No. Bittersweet Reed. She goes by her last name." It suits her, tall (and thin, but that's not remarkable) as she is.

"Ah," says Joule approvingly. "My kind of person."

"Actually, she probably is. I first met her when she beat up some boys for picking on me."

"I never beat up anyone."

"No, of course not," I say quickly. "I meant because you've been looking out for me." When I close my eyes, I can still sometimes see the video of him bashing in another boy's head with a hammer — but I know it isn't fair to think that way.

"Do you _have_ a boyfriend?"

"No." I really don't want to talk about this with Vince around, but Joule is too tipsy - or maybe just too jaded - to care.

"Good," says Joule. "Don't get one. They're not worth it."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"No boyfriends," Joule repeats. "I'm not saying that as your friend. This is mentorly advice: no boyfriends, no husbands, and definitely no kids."

"I don't see how that's any of your business," Vince scolds him.

"It's none of yours either," Joule shoots back.

"I never said it was."

"When's it ever made any difference what you say?"

"I think you should hand over that bottle, Mr. Ecklen."

"Nah. I might trade it for your watch, though."

I press myself into the seatback cushions and try to stay out of the crossfire, hoping they have enough to argue about that they'll eventually forget they were ever arguing about me. Maybe when I'm eighteen, _I_ can get drunk enough to say exactly what I think and have it all just sound like harmless nonsense.

—

The cheering starts when I'm announced and led out onto the scaffold in the town center. It stops almost as soon as the cameras are off and the Capitol people begin to pack up the stage. I appreciate the quiet, but I don't much like that everyone is still looking at me.

The moment I step off the last wooden stair and onto the ground of District 5, my mother is there to wrap me in an embrace. "Welcome home, Wren," she whispers between kisses to the top of my head. "I'm so proud of you."

_ Don't say that,_ I think. _You don't have to_. But what I tell her is: "You'll be safe now. We'll never have to worry about food again, and everyone will respect us."

"I know," she says. "But that isn't what I meant." I almost ask what she did mean, but realize quickly enough that she's proud for the reason she can't say out loud, especially not with the Capitol still hovering around the square. I can accept that kind of pride, even if I'm not completely sure that I deserve it.

"Ms. Ardell? If it's all right?" My mother gives me one more kiss before letting go of me and stepping back, and Reed's older brother, Lux, steps forward to take her place. "Good to have you back, Wren," he says, reaching out and ruffling my hair.

_("'Fox ears,' maybe?" Cornelius said, carding it so roughly I thought he might pull it out of my scalp. "Bit of a dog face. She won't ever be pretty, not without more surgery than we have time for. We could manage cute like a puppy, so let's aim for that.")_

I catch his wrist and push his hand away. He frowns at me, but doesn't say anything about it. What he does say is: "Bitty's already heading back to the house. She'd like to talk to you in private. Come with me?"

"Why did you come to tell me that instead of her?" I ask him.

"She's just not feeling well right now, that's all. It's hard on her to be out for any length of time."

I can't imagine Reed as an invalid. If she really wanted to welcome me back, I don't think anything short of a deathly illness would stop her. "In that case, it's probably best to leave her alone to recuperate. She can come see me when she feels better."

"I don't think she'll feel better until she's seen you," Lux replies bluntly.

I look to my mother. "Go ahead," she says. "He's right. She needs you." I wonder how she can sound so sure of that. Did she talk to Reed while I was gone? Did they watch the Game together?

Whatever's going on, it's starting to really worry me.

—

The first time I met Bittersweet Reed, I was eleven years old and a couple of boys from my class had cornered me after school. They had been picking on me for months —pulling my hair, sing-songing about how I'd never had a father — but recently one of them had heard his parents say that my mother let strange men kiss her if they gave her bread, and they both started insisting I tell them what they had to do so that they could kiss me. Reed snuck up behind them and shoved both of their heads into the wall they had me backed up against, then punched their noses in when they turned around to face her. "They were talking about your mom," she cheerfully explained later. "Lux once got beat up for talking about someone's mom, and Daddy said it served him right. I figured _someone_ ought to serve _them_ right."

The last time I saw her, I was looking down at her from the scaffold after my name had been called. She wouldn't look back at me.

She does look up when I enter her house and find her sitting at the table, hands folded in her lap. Without a word, she stands and starts for the door to the back room, but Lux steps forward and grabs her shoulder. "Don't be an idiot, Bitty," he tells her gently, then goes into the back himself and leaves us alone with each other.

Reed stands silently with her hands behind her back and her head turned to the side. "Hi," I say, articulately.

"I'm sorry," she answers.

"It's all right."

"It might not have been."

"But it _is_."

Finally, she manages to meet my eyes. With a deep breath, she brings her right hand out in front of her and unfolds it, palm up, to reveal a small brass ring. "This is why I didn't say good bye. It belonged to my mother. I begged Daddy to let me give it to you, and then we had to dig it out, and I ran as fast as I could, but..." She smiles a bit crookedly. "It seems kind of stupid giving it to you now, when you could have something made with real gold, or with jewels in it."

"It's beautiful," I tell her. "Jewels are only good for the novelty, and it's worn out on me. Something like this, I could love forever — if you still want me to have it." She extends her arm a bit further and nods her head. I take off the round wooden pendant I've been wearing around my neck and press it into her hand as I take the ring.

"Who gave you this?" Reed asks me.

"No one did. I made it myself a few years ago."

"Made it yourself," she repeats hollowly. "You made your own token."

"Not exactly." I try to think of a way to explain that won't just make her feel worse. There isn't one. "Well, more or less."

"Is it a bird?" she asks of the figure scratched crudely into the wood.

"A bird shaped like a 'W'. 'Wren' two ways. I thought that was awfully clever at the time, but it might have helped if I were any good at carving."

Her face falls, and I can tell before she speaks that I've said too much and she's figured it out. "It was for me. You had it ready years ago — just in case. And there _I_ was, rushing around at the last minute..."

"Reed. Neither of us thought it would turn out like this."

"I wonder why not," she says bitterly.

"I think it's better this way." I slip the ring onto my finger and hold my hand up for her to see. "I'd rather have a gift from you that's _just_ a gift and not a token. If I'd worn this into the arena, I might not have wanted to keep wearing it once I was out."

"So..." She manages to crack a smile again. "You're giving the pendant to me because _you _don't want it anymore."

"Because I don't _need_ it anymore," I say, flashing the ring again. "I wore it because it made me think of you."

Without warning, Reed lunges forward and tackles me in a hug. I hug her back, and for a moment, everything really is all right.

Then she pulls away, and I catch my first glimpse of her left hand. It's wrapped thick with bandages, and all of the fingers but her thumb are splinted.

"What happened to you?" I blurt out.

"Oh," she says, her smile going crooked again. "What do you think, knowing me?"

"Please tell me you didn't get that in a fight." She doesn't answer, just keeps smiling strangely. "Who in District 5 could have done that to you, and why in the world did you think it was a good idea to attack them?"

"Because she was awful to you."

"_She_? You got beaten by a _girl_?"

"What's so weird about that? _I'm_ a girl. Can't _I_ beat people?"

"Just how big was she?"

"Uh," says Reed, her smile contorting even further, "about my size." I stare at her incredulously. "Oh come on, Wren, that's not fair. You know I'm terrible at lying."

"Why don't tell me what _really_ happened?"

"All right. It wasn't anything heroic. I dropped a hatch on it."

"A hatch?"

"You know, at the plant. One of those big metal doors that goes up and down. I've been off work since then." She looks down at the bandages and continues more quietly, "Actually, your mother came by and took care of me for a while, since we couldn't afford to miss _two_ incomes. She's... a very kind woman."

"She is," I agree. There's a long silence between us, and then: "I should probably be getting back to her." I don't know what else I can possibly say to Reed, and I want to get away from her before I say something horribly wrong.

"That's a good idea," Reed says. She hugs me again, but this time it almost seems like she's forcing herself to do it. "Hey, you get to go to the Victors' Village, right? I bet that will be nice." I don't _think_ that the bitterness in her voice is jealousy. But if it isn't, I don't know what it is.

"It—" _It would be nicer if I could _really_ go home, _I want to say, but I can't speak that freely, not even to her. "It will be."

—

The new house has a porch, and the porch has a swing. My mother and I sit on it together and watch the sunset. At this distance from all the choking pollution the power plants put out, the ruby-red glow of the haze is quite lovely. When I catch myself thinking that, I think of the Capitol with its glittering lights and costumes — all so beautiful, all so beautifully far away from the ugliness that makes it possible.

"Maybe Reed is right to hate me," I say.

"You can't really think she hates _you_," says my mother.

"I don't know what to think. I know that something's wrong. I know she's disappointed in herself, and maybe that's all it is, but there was something cold there that seemed to go deeper." The way my mother's speaking, it seems she has her own suspicions. "Why did she need you to take care of her?" The Reed I know would insist she could do basic things for herself with one hand, and she would be right.

"Her father and brother didn't want her left alone in that state. They paid me a little — not as much as they make, but just about as much as I do for day work — so I wasn't put out by it."

"'In that state,'" I repeat. "That _almost_ sounds like how one would refer to a broken hand."

"Did she tell you _how _it got broken?"

The breeze that's been rocking the swing goes still. "She said she dropped a hatch on it."

"She did — five times, before she was dragged away screaming."

I shouldn't be shocked. I knew how much I'd changed in the time I'd been away, so why should I have had any reason to hope that everything back home would stay how it was? This shouldn't be what drives it in, and it definitely shouldn't be something that makes me hurt for myself and what _I've_ lost.

I wonder about Prim, whether she'll blame herself, whether there was someone else who loved Katniss and will blame her. I wonder who was waiting for Clove, whether they really believed she would return, what it must have been like to realize she wouldn't. I wonder about what Rue went home to, whether she's happy for now, whether her siblings are young enough to just enjoy their cake and not feel complicated about it. I wonder who Will was close to, whether I should say something to them, what I could possibly say.

I don't have to wonder what was going through my best friend's head that made her want to mutilate herself. I already know, and I really wish I didn't, because it's all my fault.


End file.
